Investments

APS invests the contributions that your employer and you pay for your pension plan. We do our best to obtain the highest possible return on the investments at an acceptable risk. That investment return is important for your pension. The returns obtained are necessary to be able to pay your future life-long pension.

Long Term

APS has formulated a strategic investment policy that reckons with our pension liabilities. This means that we mainly invest for the long run. After all, pension spans many years.

Committee advises the board

The board drafts an investment plan each year. The board is advised by an investment committee in determining the investment policy and checking the asset managers that invest our pension capital. The Minister of Finance appoints and dismisses the members of this committee at the advice of the board. The minister also consults the Central Bank of Curacao and Sint Maarten, which supervises APS.

60% of the assets invested in the domestic market

We have a domestic (Sint Maarten and Curacao) and an international investment portfolio. We are legally obliged to invest 60% of our capital (more than Afl. 650 million) in the domestic market. We are allowed to invest the other 40% in the international markets. The United States is our main international market.

The composition of our investment portfolio is roughly as follows:

Investment category

Standard

Domestic investments

60%

Fixed-interest securities, loans, term deposits

45,4%

Projects

10,6%

Real estate

3%

Cash

1%

International investments

40%

Equities

24%

Fixed-interest securities, money market funds

16%

Stimulate local economy

With the domestic investments we stimulate the economy of Sint Maarten. The importance of this was underlined after the hurricane Irma that severely struck our island in 2017. We have then accelerated investments in existing housing projects and made investment in new projects for affordable houses of good quality. This is important for us.

Return objectives

Despite the investment in the reconstruction of our island, the domestic investment opportunities for a large investor such as APS are limited. We invest the money of our participants and make stringent demands of the parties and projects in which we invest. These limitations are the reason that we use a somewhat lower return objective for our domestic portfolio than for our international portfolio. We aim to obtain an average return between 3% and 6% on our domestic investments over a period of five years. For the international portfolio, this is between 7% and 11%. As a result, our long-term objective for our total investment portfolio is an average annual return of 5.5%.